[OSM-talk] RFC: what are empty nodes and how should we use them?

[Maarten Deen]

On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:00:52 +0200, pdorange at mac.com (Pierre-Alain
Dorange) wrote:
> Jonas Stein <news at jonasstein.de> wrote:
> 
>> > Yes, but JOSM has a chunked upload mode where it uses multiple
>> > transactions for one upload.
>>
>> Can someone confirm, that josm first uploads an empty node
>> and then the content?
> 
> Can't confirm ; be it would be very strange to upload an empty node,
> then the tag associate... or an empty node then then way associated.
> But it coudl happen for ways...

I think there is some confusion. JOSM uploads nodes first and then
ways. That's just because you cannot create a way between two nodes that
have not yet been created.

But that automatically means that if you upload in multiple chunks and
something goes wrong after nodes have been uploaded, it can occur that
the nodes will be created but the ways not.
And since most nodes that belong to ways have no tags, you end up with
a bunch of untagged nodes.

I don't think anyone tries to suggest that JOSM first uploads an empty
node and then uploads it again with the tags associated with it.

Maarten